Now, I’ve written on this topic before, but as long as it keeps coming up, and folks continue to say dumber and dumber things… well, the subject probably warrants revisiting. Let’s start with Bill Ford’s vision of the future:

Pedestrians, bicycles, cars will be woven together into a single connected network…

Hmm. Sounds familiar. Any chance all these units will be hooked into …the Internet? (By the way, as a frequent pedestrian, I just love the idea of being woven into a network).

We’ll see the first vehicles able to navigate complex environments on their own…

Are these the same vehicles that we suspect will be connected to … the Internet? Navigating complex environments on their own? Sorry, not a fan.

In the “vision” article, Bill laments a sort of technology gap he sees between the auto industry and the tech industry. Paypal and eBay, on whose board he sits, “innovate in real time” he believes. Yeah? So what? (I’m not even sure what that means, by the way). This rationale would seem to justify the ad hoc dropping of whatever nifty technologies comes down the pike into whatever consumer goods we see piled up in our garage.

There are plenty of technologies that would increase safety of cars. I’m all for that. Let’s just be smart about it and start air-gapping the critical systems, ok?

Technology for technology’s sake is arguably behind some of the biggest threats to the public safety today – and it is entirely self-imposed. In the face of increasing interdependence and interconnectedness, maybe we need to take a page from the reform luddites, and look before we leap.

And Bill? Please, focus on building quality cars and forget about the smartphones on wheels. After all#WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong…